Well-Known Member

A guy at my field had a habit of buying eBay airplanes. He brought a 55 Baron home from halfway across the country...

Sans multi rating...

After telling us it was the nicest, smoothest airplane he'd ever flown the other shop, which shared our hangar, did a compression check and 11 of 12 cylinders had zero compression. They pulled the cylinders and it appeared that someone had run both engines for an extended period with no oil, the cylinders had 8th inch deep gouges around the entire barrel, and the screens were choked with metal. If you pull one of the outer layers of corrugated cardboard off and run your hand along the corrugations, that's what running your hand around the inside of the cylinder barrels was like.

It spent the next two years and three owners in annual. Someone eventually got a good deal on a sound Baron, though, after the previous two ran out of money or patience.